The Taste of Clean Water
by RayWritesThings
Summary: Nyssa ends up rescuing a very different woman. AU, Pre-Relationship


**Hello, readers. I've decided to start cross-posting some of my fics from AO3 and tumblr over to FFN, so if you recognize this story most likely you've read it on either of my accounts there (Ray_Writes and raywritesthings, respectively). If you haven't read it before, I hope you enjoy!**

**-RayWritesThings**

**The Taste of Clean Water**

Shado was going to die.

She knew this as surely as she did not know where it was to happen nor when, only that it was going to take a long and painful while. In this instance, she wished she had not been instilled with her father's instinct to survive; it would have been better to have drowned in the wreckage of the Amazo than to have struggled onto this floating funeral pyre.

She was wracked with shivers, though the skin on her bare arms, neck, and face blistered under the glare of an unrelenting sun. The hood she had worn in honor of _Bà_ had been torn from her shoulders when Oliver had made a vain reach for her tumbling out of sight off the ship's port side. She wondered, in a distant sort of way, what had become of him. Would he have perished? Or would he have fought with every bit of strength she had taught him? Was he, too, floating somewhere, lost at sea once again and gazing at a woman's photograph while he waited to die?

Shado had no photos. She had the memory of Mei, sweet Mei waiting and wondering in Hong Kong, and of _Bà_ resting in a grave marked only by a single stone. She had eyes squinting at the sun and retinas that burned. She had her shallow breaths that were pushed out past dry, cracked lips tasting of salt. Her tongue sat heavy and useless, and an urge to swallow nonexistent saliva left her hacking and gasping for more salty air.

She didn't know how she passed the slow, rocking hours. Her mind seemed to shut itself down in some last effort of self-preservation or perhaps simply because it couldn't take it any longer. It became only sluggishly aware than the bobbing of her makeshift raft on the waves had stopped, and that the sun no longer beat down uninterrupted on her exposed form.

Instead, something stood over her, blocking the light's path. What was left of her strength had her tensing instinctually, even as she knew her fight or flight response was of little use with the state she was in. It mattered little what the stranger would do to her; she was powerless to stop that unknown fate.

"_Bùyào dòng_."

Her eyes fluttered open in shock. It was her language, her own language she had been teaching Oliver just to hear it from someone else, and spoken with a degree of confidence he hadn't quite mastered. She stilled just as the voice had requested, her ragged breaths evening out of their own accord.

The woman—for it was a woman, crouched at her side. The lip of a flask was pressed to Shado's lips.

"_Hē_," the voice commanded, soft but firm.

A single drop of whatever it contained spilled over to fall on her sandpaper tongue. It burst cool and clear in her mouth, a spark of life, and suddenly Shado realized she did not want nor was going to die.

"_Shuǐ_," She rasped. She'd forgotten what water tasted like, and now it was the sweetest thing she'd ever known.

An arm was braced under her, tilting her up towards the flask. "_Shì_."

Mustering her remaining energy she raised her head, greedily licking and letting the water soak her tongue and run down her jaw. Shado drank and drank and it would never be enough—but her rescuer at last pulled the flask away.

"_Qǐng_." Hoarse as it still was, she was starting to recognize her own voice. Shado's held fell back, eyes pleading—and that was the first she truly glimpsed her rescuer.

The woman was…striking. She wore a hood and a covering over her nose and mouth, but the eyes alone were bright and piercing. Slung over her back was a bow and quiver full of arrows; she realized she knew not what had happened to her own, nor where she was, nor who this woman was.

"Please," she repeated quietly.

"You require more than water," her rescuer stated. With one fluid motion she had inserted her other arm beneath Shado's knees, then stood with her held securely in a carry. Shado's head fell against the woman's chest, her eyes slipping shut again.

With her trust placed fully in this stranger who showed her kindness in another strange land, she would make _Bà _proud. She would survive.


End file.
